The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

The later buildings are of far more recent date; but perhaps here it would be well to describe the mode of building and thus explain our reasons for modernising Chichen. To be technical, the first part to examine in a building is its foundations. The ruins of Yucatan appear to lack nothing of solidity in this matter. Usually they are founded on truncated pyramids which when intact would appear to be cut from solid rock. They are however not built, like the pyramids of Egypt, of solid blocks of stone, but are simply faced with stone slabs only a few inches thick. Beneath these the pyramid is formed of loose building rubble and earth. The Chichen Castillo is a good example of Mayan building methods. The limestone slabs forming the face of the pyramid are less than a foot thick. Beneath them is loose rubble. Thus should one of these facing slabs work out of place, when the wet season came the rain would get in behind the slabs and quickly move the ones below out of their positions. The earth and rubble would be washed away in the wet season and crumbled away in the hot season, until in a few years there would be a perfect avalanche of these slabs from the top, falling, for lack of support, like a pack of cards. The stairway at the Castillo is formed of blocks of stone let but a short way into the pyramids. The consequence is that not one of the four stairways as built by the Indians could be ascended to-day unless you were an Alpine climber willing to risk broken limbs.

All the other buildings at Chichen illustrate the same careless methods of construction.

The Nunnery was built, as we have stated on page 101, at different periods or else the original design was added to. On the north side is a hole that has been made in the structure by a former owner of the Chichen hacienda. This hole shows that the building is of the same material as the Castillo, but built in a different way. Being perpendicular it was impossible to face it, as was the Castillo, after the rubble had been put in position. The walls must have been built first and the inside filled in afterwards. That this was the case is shown by the fact that the wall is separate and not faced on to the rubble in any way. The fallen south-west corner in like manner shows how the addition to the building was made. A wall was built out the desired distance from the main structure and the space between the two filled up with rubble and earth. It will be obvious to every reader that this mode of building was a weak one. The heavy weight of loose rubble and earth enclosed in a wall between two and three feet thick was not a very substantial foundation for a heavy building. Naturally the tendency would be for the walls to bulge and crack, spelling ruin to the whole building.

But now let us turn from the foundations to the buildings themselves. Mr. Henry C. Mercer, in his book Hill Caves of Yucatan (Philadelphia, 1896), is very outspoken on this subject. On p. 95 he says, "The more we examined the walls the more we wondered not so much at their antiquity as at the fact that they had not already crumbled to the ground.... A facing of blocks shaped like the letter V pushed mosaic-fashion into a central pudding-like concrete of stone and mortar was a weak form of construction. Neither were the face stones interlocked systematically so as to bind the joints. Everything was slipping out of place. No wonder there were fresh cracks in the walls, that whole façades tumbled, and that overseers (of haciendas) had spoken of structures that had lost their identity in twenty years." Mr. Mercer is right. When one considers the hopelessly slipshod manner of their building, one is obliged to admit that the wonder is that all the Mayan palaces and temples have not already crumbled to the ground.

There was only one method of building in Yucatan, and it is difficult to say how this was carried out. The walls average about two feet three inches in thickness and were made up as follows. Ten inches of stone on the outside, about seven to eight on the inside, and the space intervening between these two surfaces is filled with a mixture of mortar and rubble. The outer surface wall was generally formed of solid square or oblong stones of various sizes. No care was taken to "bind" them one with the other as in the Egyptian and modern buildings. We often noticed the joins of the stones coming directly one above the other for as many as three or four layers, the result generally being a large gaping crack where the wall had bulged at this weak spot.

Another weak point in these outer walls is the fact that the crevices between the two layers of stone are often filled up with stone chips. As often as not these were wedge-shaped and had been driven into the mortar between the layer and then smoothed off level with the face of the building. As the mortar dried and the building "settled," these chip wedges tended to loosen, and after a series of rainy seasons ended by falling out altogether. Some of the better-placed ones are still in position, though these may have been added only a few years before the coming of the Spaniards, and, as the buildings had then quite "settled," have retained their position to the present day. But such a method is obviously a weak spot in building.

Weaker still is the method employed in the building of the inner wall. Most of the stones are pyramidal or V-shaped, as Mr. Mercer calls them. They are in fact wedge-shaped pieces of stone as seen in the cut on p. 264, embedded in the mortar and rubble of the interior of the wall, the thick end of the wedge forming a flat surface for the wall. Here again, as the wall subsided after the building was finished, these were pushed out of place or loosened by the weight above them. Once this took place there was no hope for any building. A block that had been pushed out generally meant the loosening of the stones around, and in time the whole façade would fall. But often over the face of the stones was put a thick layer of plaster which is in many cases still in position, speaking well for its durability. This plaster, as often as not two or three inches thick, kept the stone in position. The same slipshod methods are seen in the ornamentation of the building. The small colonnade at Labna is an example in point. The columns were not embedded in the wall at the top or bottom, but, half rounded, were stuck on to this concrete interior without the least solid stone masonry as support.

The common type of roof is flat, the only exceptions being those which have superstructures rising in the centre or front for purely ornamental purpose. The cut on p. 264 gives a section in which the roof is portrayed. The outer wall is carried up with its usual average thickness to the top of the building. The interior is the regular type of arch, also shown in the illustration, formed by blocks of stones placed one above the other in such a way as to appear like about ten inverted steps. To add a better finish to the interior after these were in position, they were trimmed off evenly, making a flat sloping surface which was afterwards plastered and painted. The arch did not come to a point. Instead, across its top a slab was laid, as our illustration shows. Between the outer side of this arch and the inner side of the perpendicular outer wall of the building the space was filled up with the same concrete rubble as was used between the walls, making a level roof which in some cities we found had been cemented over. The result of this weight of loose stone pressing on the sides of the arch was that as soon as the inner wall of the arch became weak the whole roof fell in and filled up the building. This is what has happened in the ruins of old Chichen. The walls are found amid the débris of fallen roofs. This is what is happening to-day in the other buildings in Chichen and elsewhere in the Peninsula; and this is what will happen until all these ancient structures have become roofless ruins. And that time is not far off. Old Chichen has fallen. The Chichen standing to-day is fast falling to pieces. Uxmal has no great lease of life before it, and the buildings of Labna, Kabah, and Sayil are tottering.

Lastly, we would say something of the building of doorways in these cities. The lintels of the doors are almost invariably formed of the wood of the Central American sapota tree (Achras sapota). The wood is very hard, durable, and heavy, and in a dry climate would last practically for ever. But the climate of Yucatan can scarcely be termed dry; for the wet season averages five months. Despite this fact we find those sapota beams at Chichen, which have not been exposed to the weather, in fairly good preservation. The decay of one which was exposed has caused the falling of a room in the Castillo on the north side; and this has also taken place in the room on the west side of the House of Tigers. Possibly this was the cause of the falling of the front of the temple at the north end of the Tennis Court. Chichen stands on high ground compared with Uxmal, where scarcely a lintel can be found in position to-day, though Uxmal is not older than Chichen. At Labna and Kabah again are lintels still in good preservation, owing to those cities being built on the sierras. This question of the condition of the lintels, even in the most favourable situations, is very suggestive in regard to the dates to be assigned to the majority of the ruins. If the thousand odd years ascribed to them by enthusiasts really represented their age, there would not be a single lintel found anywhere.

When to the slipshod methods of building one must add the fact that the climate is a trying one for any style of architecture and that the friability of the limestone used is excessive, one realises that no very great date can be assigned to the ruins still standing. To date even approximately each city is almost impossible. The ruins of many of them point to several dates for each. Some buildings are intact; others are falling; while some are mere crumbling heaps. No doubt none of the larger cities were built all at once. They represented years of labour. For example the Palace at Sayil might have taken a score of years. In most cities the first building attempted was probably a temple. Possibly a century might have elapsed before a second temple or a palace was put up, and thus to-day you naturally have mere heaps of stone close to buildings still intact.